Looking back at my old tilesets it was readily evident that the first one I completed needed to be redone to match the rest that followed. As I progressed through each tileset the amount of detail increased as I actually gained more skill in pixel-art--at least when it came to tiles. The first set didn't have the same feel as the rest at all, so it got a complete facelift. The overall structure stayed the same, it just seems more "textured" now.

After throwing that tileset together I began working on the first NPC type. To be honest, I wasn't really prepared for having to do even more art. I have a basic animation for movement and idling that works out quite well. In putting these together, however, I realized that generating both "happy" and "sad" versions of every single frame of every single sprite would be a lot of work. I'm opting for, instead of doing that, to have an indicator that floats near each NPC depicting whether they are sad or not. This way, it's easy to tell that something needs to be done. Once they are made happy, no more indicator. I think it might work out quite well, but I need to throw together a prototype version of it to play around with in order to be sure.

On top of that, creating a rudimentary AI for these little creatures is going to be.. "interesting" for lack of a better term. So far each NPC type has the basic ability to walk left and right, while colliding with the world around them. Some behaviors they don't have are ones like jumping over an obstacle in their way. I definitely do not want them moving between maps on their own unless carried by the player. I'm hoping I can get by with making them as zombie-like as possible while still being convincing.

One step at a time. Next up is showing a sad-badge on top of sad NPCs.

Finally "connected" one end of the game world to another. By that I mean: beginning with the starting area, I have created one of the first loops where you end up back in that same starting area without completely backtracking. This actually paves the way for the first big chunk of backtracking in the game; at least, backtracking how I envision it working in an almost completely untested game world. Once I start testing it out, more likely than not I'm going to have to start tweaking things here and there. So, this basically means that I will be taking it easy on world-building for a while. Now that I have this first loop set up, I need to start populating the world and ensure that what I have setup is workable. That means I'll be looking at the following stuff:

• Fixing and cleaning up tilesets that need it
• Tweaking maps with the new cleaned-up tiles
• Placing objects! Powerups, NPCs, save points!
• Testing and bugfixing

To be honest, it feels pretty good to know I will be taking a break from world-building for a little while. It's not torture, but after focusing on it for so long a break sounds really nice. Playing with object placement is also going to force me into areas of the codebase that I haven't touched in a while. This will be good, since there's still a lot of functionality and entire objects that I know I will need yet are still missing.